"We have a corking day!" he exclaimed, with an approving glance at the cloudless sky. "And we'll have a corking ride. I'm glad your people were married sixty miles from Waloo. This is just a formality, you know, Miss Gilfooly. We all know that you really are the Queen of the Sunshine Islands. We don't need any certificates." And he laughed joyously. It was so strange and unbelievable and delightful that he was to drive a young queen to Mifflin and back.
"It's so wonderful that I can't believe it," Tessie told him earnestly, and her voice quivered with the wonder of it. She looked speculatively at the tonneau of the big car. There was no one in it. "Could we take my grandmother, Mr. Douglas?" She raised her big blue eyes appealingly. "She would enjoy the ride. And my brother Johnny? He's a Boy Scout."
"Sure, we can take all the royal family," chuckled Bert. "There's plenty of room, and we'll feel safer to have a Scout with us." He laughed again as he hospitably opened the tonneau door.
Mrs. Scanlon stood at her window and watched Granny and Johnny settle themselves proudly in the car. She saw Tessie take the seat next to the wheel, and she was green with envy from her red hair to her patched black shoes. She had heard the news, and in her heart she wished that she had had a son to run away to sea and be a king. "My Lil would make a better-looking queen than that washed-out Tessie Gilfooly," she thought, as she watched them from behind the skimpy curtain. "Lil's suit was new this spring, and that blue dud Tessie has on is a year old if it's a day. I don't believe it's really true! Such things don't happen! Queen, indeed!" And she sniffed loudly and elevated her long thin nose because little Tessie Gilfooly had come home with some ridiculous story about being a queen.
Jonah, Johnny's dog—a mongrel with a most rakish brown spot on his white face—jumped wistfully around the car. Jonah wanted to drive to Mifflin too. He saw no reason why he should be left at home alone.
"Could we take him?" asked Granny, eager for the family to enjoy the ride as a family. "He'd enjoy it."
And Jonah joined the two in the tonneau.
"Just as well he's going," muttered Mrs. Scanlon. "I wouldn't have no time to feed anybody's dog to-day!" And to show how little she cared about the good fortune which had come to her neighbors, she took her chairs and tables out of the parlor and gave the room a thorough cleaning.
Bert was right. It was a wonderful day—a blue and gold day. There was not a cloud in the sky, nor a care in the car. The road to Mifflin was velvet smooth, so that the drive, as Bert had prophesied, was delightful. It was no time at all before they were in front of the red brick building which was Mifflin's new Court House. But when they went in and demanded a copy of the record of the marriage of John Gilfooly and Teresa Andrews, which had been solemnized in Mifflin twenty years ago, the clerk could not find the record.
"That's funny!" he exclaimed. "It was here yesterday, but it isn't here to-day!" He looked puzzled.